•The word comes from the Greek in which (país, genitive paidos)means "child" and (ágog) means "lead";so it literally means "to lead the child".

Yes we are all pedagoguesand we all practise pedagogy.

However, as Dr Graeme Aitken points out:

much of what we know about teaching and learning is implicit and tacit. In other words, as teachers we tend to operate instinctively and we are notoften asked to articulate what what we are doing and, more importantly,why we are doing it.

Community of LearnersIf we are going to be a community of learners,we need to make our understandings about pedagogymore explicit so we can reflect criticallyand enter into debate that will further improve our practice.

Activity

In order to bring some of our underlying assumptions to the fore,

and so we can get some sense of what is already accepted tacitly,

we are going to carry out a few activities.

Activity 1

1.Could you list the names of any educational thinkers who may

have influenced your thinking about teaching or our general

thinking about education. (This is not a test.)

2.Add the names of any educational theories you are familiar with

or even just vaguely aware of.

Activity 2

Returning to Aitken: What else did you get from this paper?

Discuss in groups of 3 or 4. Poster.

Report to meeting.

Individual Teaching

Much of our individual teaching is idiosyncratic -having a stuffed monkey in your class - something that you find works for you, but isn’t necessarily transferable. ( It won’t necessarily work for someone else.) Some of the techniques you use may work with one group of students but not with another. Some of the approaches you use may work at one age level but notanother.

Transferable PedagogiesHowever there can be certain pedagogies that can have more general application. Research has shown them to be effective in multiple contexts - as Aitken might say they have ‘competent warrants’. These should form a common core to our thinking about teaching, but we need to remain critical.

Critical Perspective•There is no Bible, no Gita, no Koran, No Talmud for teaching. •Just because an approach has a certain authoritative branding (be it Inquiry, Multiple Intelligences, Reciprocal Teaching), it doesn’t mean that that it will always work and that we need to accept it on faith. We need to maintain a critical perspective. We need to check it against our intellect and our practice. This is Teacher Inquiry.

Understanding•If we are given a piece of research and we file it in our folder, it doesn’t mean the work is done. We have to construct our own understanding. (What theory is being employed here?) •If we are going to work together, we need to cross-check our understandings between ourselves so we can co-construct a shared understanding. (You might like to think about our discussion of National Standards in this respect.).

Egg MetaphorThis is all leading somewhere. I would like you to consider the following metaphor for what teachingin this school mightlook like:a poached egg.The YokeAt the centre, the yoke, we have a set of sharedunderstanding about pedagogy. Things we commonlyagree on.

We could say that for now that space is empty, becauseeverything is up for consideration. However, implicitlywe already do have some shared approaches, like ourinquiry model.

The WhiteIn this model the outer area, the egg white,

is also of crucial importance. It is what

allows us to be individuals. It is the

idiosyncratic part of our teaching. What

works for us. It gives us autonomy and

ensures we are not clones of each other: Bex’s interest in photography,

Krista’s cooking, Alwyn’s strength in and affinity for

Maori ….(to name a few).

BalanceIf we squeeze too much into the yolk, the centre, there is less and less room for the idiosyncratic aspects of teaching. So we have to be careful that our shared commitments are more than a grab-bag of untestedideas. They need to be things that we are all really committed to. Also they also need to be compatible with our statutorycommitments. The NZ Curriculum will always need to be in the centre. However we can configure it in our